Dec 26, 2013 10:22 PM

Found this on the beach at Skegness on Boxing Day. A similar sized piece of blubber was also found upshore.

We've had a good search, looking at seals, sharks, whales, and even - in desperation - more exotic animals, but cannot identify an animal that has the same large bones (or cartilage) and hair like projections. Although unclear, the two sides (which look like a group of small bones) do appear to stretch out - like wings?

This was about 1.5 - 2m in length and was rather heavy (could not be lifted)

All of the structures in the photographs look like they are made from cartiladge. The only animals which have skeletons made entirely of cartiladge are the sharks. There are two broad categories of shark, the normal thin sleek 'sharks' and the RAYS. What you have found is part of the skeleton of a ray.

Now that is a inspired suggestion. Here is a link to a porbeagle shark skeleton; there are features in the fins which I interpreted as the wings of a ray, I can see that it is consitent with a large shark rather than a ray. The size is certainly consistent with basking shark